I have a policy on this site that I do not discuss politics, sex, religion or drugs. I call this “PSRD”. I do this because these subjects have become incredibly divisive (especially politics) and I don’t want people getting into stock flamewars in my comments over subjects that have already been argued to death and back.
On the other hand…I had a bit of an epiphany over the weekend about games that have an overt political slant and I’d really like to talk about it. And it does feel weird to not be able to talk about whatever I want on my own blog. I know that a lot of people have multiple blogs for different subjects, but I’m honestly far too lazy to set that up (and policing one blog is enough work already).
So I’m going to do what James Lileks does and warn you.
Warning. If you continue reading, you might find out something about my political views that you do not like. Thus, if you want to continue to like me, you should not continue reading. Should you ignore this warning and continue to read and then decide that you no longer like me, please flame me through email rather than with a comment. Flame comments will be deleted.
Last chance to stop reading and not be offended by my political bias.
Okay. Over the weekend I was doing some “history of gaming” research and I was reminded of the Oddworld series of games. Now, I’d never really liked the Oddworld games; I felt they were artistically brilliant but the gameplay was primitive. But it wasn’t until I watched a GDC presentation by Lorne Lanning that I started to actively hate them.
That presentation (which, unfortunately, Gamasutra no longer hosts) was ostensibly about producing games. But what Lanning actually delivered was a liberal anti-government, anti-business diatribe. Which explained a lot to me about his games. There’s no such thing as a good business in Oddworld; all businesses are evil and the people who create and run them are willing to commit any atrocity to keep profits up. Destroying them is a brave and noble act.
And that reminded me of a couple other things. First, Jay is Games featured a whole bunch of “serious games” on his site right before the midterm elections last year – all of which had a liberal slant. (One of them was about how important NGOs are to developing countries, something a whole lot of people would dispute.) When called on it, he basically said “It’s my site, if you don’t like it stop reading.” Which of course is his right. And it’s my right to stop reading him – which I didn’t do. But I don’t read him as often as I used to, because now I feel I have to vet each link he provides to make sure there’s no message before I click. Because honestly, I don’t play games to get preached at.
Which made me start wondering…why is it that practically every game that has an overt political slant is liberal? Conservatives tend to dutifully scrub their own personal prejudices out of the games they make – witness The Political Machine, which is scrupulously nonpartisan even though its creator, Brad Wardell, is definitely conservative.
And then I remembered this nearly excellent article in The Guardian (England’s largest newspaper) about Ian Bell and David Braben, the creators of Elite. Now, The Guardian is liberal to the core. At no point will a conservative viewpoint ever be approvingly presented in that publication. But I was shocked at the amount of bashing on Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher there was in an article that seemingly had nothing to do with politics.
And that’s when I realized that games that have an overt political bias are liberal because most of the common game mechanics are fundamentally conservative.
Take Elite itself. The two basic mechanics of Elite are “work to improve your lot through your own actions” and “if anyone tries to steal your hard-earned money, shoot them”. Both of these are conservative principles. Which doesn’t surprise me, I don’t think “wait for your next government stipend” would make for compelling gameplay.
Plus there was the fact that writing Elite made both Bell and Braben rich. You’re not supposed to be able to get rich in a socialist society, no matter how much value you provide to how many people. Thus, while the reporter was obligated to write about them because they’d made a game that had become world famous and inspired many other games, he felt the need to remind us how fundamentally Bad the whole situation was. He even made sure to note that Bell had become a good liberal now.
Unfortunately for the liberals, the most popular PC game in the world is also one of the most conservative. I’m talking about The Sims 2.
The Sims 2 is a fantastic game, but I’d deliberately not played it much because it is such a time sink – I think it’s the one game that sucks up time even better than RPGs. Megan has been playing it practically since it shipped, and when I was assigned to work on a Sims 2-based project here at work I finally could justify spending several hours with the game.
Just running a simple simulation of a household is enough to shatter a whole bunch of liberal delusions. One of the base scenarios in Sims 2 explicitly shows how difficult it is to raise a child as a single parent. Another makes it quite clear what adultery does to a household. Several show the consequences of having sex (or “making woohoo” as they put it in the Sims world) with a bunch of different people. The game does a great job of teaching the importance of setting good goals and working towards them. It even shows how important it is to choose a spouse well. Plus there’s the fact that getting ahead in Sims 2 requires a lot of work (even with cheat codes). It doesn’t preach; all it does is show the consequences. Which has certainly been enough to cause Megan to come to several useful conclusions.
And I love the fact that the user base of Sims 2 is evenly split between men and women.
In the end, propaganda is the enemy of art and I certainly wouldn’t call any of the liberal-slanted games I encountered “good” by any standard. So I guess I shouldn’t let it bother me.
*** But I don’t read him as often as I used to, because now I feel I have to vet each link he provides to make sure there’s no message before I click. Because honestly, I don’t play games to get preached at. ***
Conservative games just are, but liberal games have an agenda and a message?
*** Which doesn’t surprise me, I don’t think “wait for your next government stipend” would make for compelling gameplay. ***
Granted, it’s politics, which is heated enough, but why is it so rare to find a conservative who doesn’t immediately assume that liberal == evil, lazy, anti-good, anti-American?
I recall playing SimCity and The Sims, and I didn’t feel like I was being a conservative while trying to keep the people in my household happy. I suppose if you work off the assumption that liberals would only care about giving away the hard work of good people to lazy criminals, then yeah, I guess you could also assume that good games will generally make use of conservative principles. Of course, I don’t think that liberals are “just plain wrong” and anti-capitalist, so I wouldn’t come to that conclusion.
Somehow setting goals and working towards them are uniquely conservative? So any successful liberal just got lucky then? Liberals don’t work hard? Conservatives don’t commit adultery? Am I supposed to believe that successful liberals are only successful because they started “acting like a conservative”, or that adulterous conservatives were just “acting like a liberal” in a moment of weakness?
I refuse to think so because I refuse to assume that someone who doesn’t agree with my political views must necessarily be mentally deranged or whatever the argument some high profile conservatives make. Maybe it makes it easier to feel better about being “proven right”, but it doesn’t lend itself well to public discourse.
But then, I’m an idealist. I would love it if people who disagreed would stick with the issues instead of assuming the worst in each other’s character.
As for games, I don’t know of many with an overtly political bent in either direction. I have seen some activist games, which presumably would be considered liberal because they dare to say that some corporations are doing bad things, that just weren’t that good, but that was because they were clones of pretty crappy games in the first place. There were some good games, but they were clones of good games.
I have read on Gamasutra about some political games, but I don’t recall thinking that they were liberal or conservative in nature. A few are based on the modern day conflict between Israel and Palestine.
In the end, I think it is a bit short-sighted to assume that a liberal message is necessarily wrong, just as I think a conservative message isn’t necessarily wrong. I don’t see anything intrinsically and uniquely conservative about good game mechanics.
Oh, and I’ll still read your blog. B-)
Regarding Sims2, your premise seems to be that liberals are bad at monogamy. Or at least relatively bad.
I don’t think this premise is supported.
If you’ll forgive the crude subsitution of “republican/democrat” for “liberal/conservative,” consider that divorce rates are much higher in “red states” than “blue states.” It’s a solid trend. In Texas, for example, our divorce rate is 60% higher than in Massachusetts.
In both your cases I am talking about liberal/conservative theory as opposed to practice.
GB: I’m sure that there are a lot of hardworking liberals, but basic liberal theory is that the government should solve most of an individual’s problems (and the number of problems the government should solve determines where on the scale of liberalism the government lies, from socialism to communism). Retirement, health care, education, welfare – these should all be handled by the government. Where does the government get the money necessary to run these programs? By taxing “the rich” – IE, people who actually excel and create wealth. Thus, there’s no real point in having goals and working towards them in a socialist society – the government will just take it all away from you “for the good of all”.
Ryan: My point is that it’s difficult to argue that “You should stay together to raise your children and not do anything to break up your marraige” is a liberal concept…they’ve spent decades vilifying the traditional family and trying to destroy it.
I tend to cringe when intelligent people use words like “liberal” and “conservative.”
Because I am not sure an idea of any complexity can be meaningfully projected onto a one-dimensional space. I don’t really know why anyone would think that it can. The whole notion seems absurd to me.
I’m using these words deliberately because they have come to have fairly specific meanings through general consensus. I could have used much more accurate words like “individualist” versus “collectivist” but it would have been harder for people to understand what I was saying.
Vilifying the traditional family? Trying to destroy it?
I seriously do not know what you’re talking about.
I don’t think I’ve heard anybody of any political affiliation actually admit to such a goal. Why would someone have it? What would be the point?
They seem to dissolve their own families less frequently… do you suppose they are attempting to trick their enemies into familial dissolution?
One of the basic principles of feminism is that the traditional family is oppressive to women; Betty Friedan called it “a comfortable concentration camp” in her book The Feminine Mystique. I think it would be hard to argue that feminists are conservative.
It would have been harder to understand, in part, because “individualist” and “collectivist” do not map very strongly to “conservative” and “liberal.”
I can’t say much about the book you mention because I haven’t read it. Have you? I am curious to know the context of that four-word excerpt. It seems rather shocking.
Is it your impression that “liberals” secretly agree with Mistress Friedan?
Because, seriously, I don’t think I have ever heard an adult human being express that sentiment.
On the subject of vocabulary, the specific mapping established through general consensus… that’s a large part of what strikes me as absurd.
By convention, ideas like “gay marriage” and “reduced military spending” are projected to a certain region of a one-dimensional space. By the same convention, ideas like “prohibition of flag burning” and “reduced taxation” are projected to another region of the same space.
Is there a sensible algorithm behind these projections? If so, I can’t see it. They seem like arbitrary associations between disparate ideas.
Yes there is a fantastic algorithm.
1) Separate the politicians into the two camps, liberal and conservative. How you accomplish this step it up to you, I find a dartboard to be helpful.
2) Ask each one of them where they stand on each issue you want to call Liberal or Conservative. Track the different views of each issue independently here.
3) The side with more representatives for a given view gets to own a particular view of the issue and call it there own.
Also in step 1 you can use other public figures and news sources as well. Using these people your side can steal an issue without having to actually support it.
One cool side effect is the negative issue. Once your side firmly owns an issue, you can say that the other guys are against it even if they are not because clearly they don’t support it as much as you. And once you have accomplished this you can force them to actually have to defend the unpopular viewpoint in order to not look like they are switching sides.
So the associations are not arbitrary (unless you use the dart board approach), they make perfect sense.
: This is the most posts I’ve seen here…. Maybe I should use some of this politics stuff to get more traffic on my site….. I Know, “Conservative’s for the exploitation of spoons! Don’t be Liberal, exploit a spoon a today.”
Don’t worry, I won’t be posting lots of political stuff to drive traffic up; I’ll leave that to other bloggers. I posted this solely because it had something to do with gaming as well as politics.